Enroll America Also Training Journalists on the Benefits of Obamacare

James O’Keefe and Project Veritas recently released an undercover video seeking to expose Obamacare ‘navigators’ for corruption. The video provides evidence of workers encouraging clients to lie on government forms, committing fraud, and finding ways to skirt other legal requirements. One of those groups organizing these navigators, Enroll America, is readily exposed as an arm of a Democratic political action committee (PAC).

Perhaps even worse in a big scheme scenario, Enroll America was also involved in a case of media corruption, participating in a training session less than ten months ago, advising business journalists from prominent news organizations on how to target their messages to convey positive news about Obamacare.

We recently highlighted a symposium hosted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), and funded by the Commonwealth Fund, an organization currently led by David Blumenthal, former senior health adviser to the Obama campaign. The event paired-up a self-described progressive organization with over a dozen reporters to provide “specialized education in health care reporting.”

A similar event was held back in January, with a special presentation provided by Rachel Klein, formerly of Enroll America. Much as in the O’Keefe video, the SABEW website describes the group as a “non-partisan, non-political organization.” But as the Project Veritas investigation reveals, Enroll America is actively working to share data on Obamacare customers with a highly partisan Democrat organization known as Battleground Texas, identified as a PAC. Enroll America is even described at one point as “the official group for the DNC.”

SABEW had invited Klein to their event called, The Business of Health Care, held at Reuters headquarters in New York City in mid-January. She was given a one-hour session at the SABEW event titled, Spreading the Word to America, in which she spoke with reporters from news organizations such as Reuters, Money Magazine, MarketWatch, and the Dallas Morning News.

Klein delivered a PowerPoint presentation that declared that the Enroll America mission and that of the Obama administration were in tune. An initial set of slides read, “Delivering on the promise of affordable health coverage for millions of Americans starts now.” The intial slide simply reads “Delivering on the promise…” and shows a fawning group of Democrats watching the President sign his health care legislation into law.

Klein explains to her audience that “a key challenge” in messaging lies in “informing consumers of how the ACA (Affordable Care Act) will benefit them.” She also states that, “The majority of uninsured Americans don’t know the health reform law will help them.”

This is a pro-Obamacare organization providing messaging techniques for reporters to only outline the positives of an administration policy that we have come to learn is more detrimental than beneficial. This was not a journalism class that urged reporters to weigh the pros and cons, to report on the upside and the downside, to remain fair and balanced.

The following is a slide from Klein’s PowerPoint presentation at the symposium:

Another slide provides “Targeting Messages”:

Again, highlighting the benefits and even providing targeted phrases for certain segments of the population. Telling the media how to do their job and do it in such a manner that it benefits the administration.

Since this early-year symposium providing “specialized training” to journalists on Obamacare, Klein appears to have returned to a previous employer, Families USA, as Director of their National Enrollment Assister Support Center.

At Families USA, the training of journalists on Obamacare has not been halted for Klein. She appears as a panelist for an event just days before the disastrous Healthcare.gov launch. The event is called, National Health Policy Journalist Training for Communities of Color.

In addition to training journalists in communities of color, Time reported that Families USA received a $1 million grant in October to “collect and distribute to the media personal stories of those who have benefited from the new health insurance exchange rolled out by the Obama Administration.”

Families USA also operates under the guise of being completely non-partisan and non-political. With that in mind, here is their completely non-political announcement regarding efforts to gather and disseminate pro-Obamacare stories to the media:

If you or someone you know is enrolling in new health coverage, tell us about it. Whether it’s an uncle with a pre-existing condition, a neighbor whose job doesn’t offer health insurance, or a sister who has recently been laid off, we all may know someone who can benefit from enrolling in quality, affordable coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

If the blatant positive messaging isn’t enough to convince you of the corruption in media involving Obamacare, perhaps this might – Families USA partnered with the Obama administration’s former communications director Anita Dunn and other Democrat strategists to devise a positive PR campaign to help salvage the President’s health care policy. The campaign was described by the head of the organization as “an effort to shape the media’s perception of health-care legislation.”

From SABEW and the Commonwealth Fund, onward to Enroll America and Families USA, the tentacles of corruption are wrapped around numerous journalists and reporters, urging them to report positively on Obamacare. Proving that these groups, the people involved with them, and our American media have lost all pretense of being either non-partisan or non-political.

About the AuthorRusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.